Horizon Scanning at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health

Marco Palomino

Tim Taylor

Richard Owen

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”

Thomas J. Watson (CEO of IBM, 1943)

Foresight

Outline

• What is horizon scanning?

• How has it been carried out traditionally?

• How are we carrying out horizon scanning?

• Web-based approach.

• What have we done so far?

• Examples of previous work.

Outline

Definition

Horizon scanning is the systematic search for incipient trends, opportunities and constraints that might affect the probability of achieving management goals and objectives. Explicit objectives of horizon scanning are to anticipate issues, accumulate data and knowledge about them, and thus inform crucial decisions” (Sutherland, et al., 2011).

Horizon scanning

• Traditional approach: Emerging issues are identified through meetings,conferences, workshops and informal networking.

• Web-based approach: Emerging issues are identified through theWorld Wide Web.

• Web-based approach: Augments personal interaction with the use ofelectronic information sources, in particular the Web.

Approaches

Web-based approach

Web-based

informationretrieved

and / or

received

Informationextracted,

categorised,

analysed

and archived

Informationcommunicated:

report,

newsletter

Further tools:

e.g., risk and

opportunity

analysis;

scenarios

Iteration

Decision

support: e.g.,

investment;

resource

allocation;

policy

Horizon scanning

• We have developed a prototype tocontinuously scan the Web for new andemerging information related to theenvironment and human health.

• Apart from its information gatheringcapabilities, our prototype organises theinformation that it collects and displays iton a website that can be browsed usingany Web-browser.

• Both the information gathering processand the website creation are performedautomatically.

Prototype

• We have focused on news articlesthus far (more than peer-reviewedjournals or other academic sources):

• If it is in the news, it may not bebacked by a large body ofscientific evidence, but it mayrefer to new and unknown issues.

• If the information is published in abook, it is not “fresh” enoughanymore.

Focus on the news

Using an area of interest for the insurance industry, namely, space weather–the changing environmental conditions in the near-Earth space–and its potential risks to terrestrial and near-Earth insurable assets, we benchmarked our Web-based approach against current information retrieval practice within Lloyd’s Emerging Risks Group.

Palomino, M., Vincenti, A. and Owen, R. (2012), "Optimising Web-Based Information Retrieval Methods for Horizon Scanning". (Under review)

Previous work: Lloyd’s

Lloyd’s comparison

Web-based Horizon Scanning

Emerging Risks Group

Current Practice

Very relevant Relevant Very relevant Relevant

Week 1 29 66 3 1

Week 2 19 64 2 1

Week 3 11 74 0 1

Week 4 5 74 3 1

What have we found so far?

Lloyd’s comparison

Questions

• We have been collecting information everyday since

the beginning of February.

• Is any of you interested in having a look at it?

• Is any of you interested in scanning the Web for

information on a particular subject?

• Please, contact me.

Questions